The Home Front: Well, that was one wild wind storm yesterday…

The Gazette in Colorado Springs fronts a package about a wild wind storm that ripped through the Pikes Peak region yesterday, toppling tractor trailers, leveling trees, crunching cars and tearing roofs from houses. The storm, however, is “unlikely to rank among the [the] worst insured catastrophes,” the paper reports, and cleanup could take weeks. Thousands were still without power Tuesday morning in Colorado’s second-largest city.

“The Ski Granby Ranch chairlift from which a Texas mom and her two young daughters fell late last month had problems with its electrical drive-control system that contributed to a ‘rare dynamic event’ at the time of the accident, a preliminary state report released Monday shows,” The Denver Postreports. “The chair carrying 40-year-old Kelly Huber and her children struck a lift tower about a third of the way up the mountain before the three fell roughly 25 feet onto hard-packed snow. Huber was killed. Her daughters were injured.”

Marijuana advocates in Colorado are “waiting to see how threatening President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for attorney general, Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, an avowed pot foe, could be for the industry,” reportsThe Greeley Tribune this morning. “They also wonder which Republican position will win out: opposition to marijuana or promotion of states’ rights.Sessions has an anti-marijuana reputation that’s left many in the industry fearing the direction he would take enforcement. He’s chastised the last two attorneys general for not enforcing federal marijuana laws and said that ‘good people don’t smoke marijuana.'”

The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel asks in a front-page headline: “Everyone Having an Ice Time?” The paper reports a rare ice storm “brought the Grand Valley to a sliding halt on Monday morning, resulting in drivers stranded on Interstate 70 for hours, car accidents, flight cancellations, delays and closures for schools and businesses.”

But the competition for best local headline in Colorado was fierce Wednesday. As The Loveland Reporter-Herald reported in a banner above-the-fold hed about a city council race: “Resident Announces Run.” Actually, according to the story, it’s two residents. But don’t let that ruin an awesome headline.

“A family claims they were banned for life from a Fort Collins Chuck E. Cheese after they accused an employee of watching pornography on his cellphone,” reportsThe Coloraodan. “We couldn’t find anyone to help us fix (the machine), so we walked up to the doorman (Kid Check employee),” an alleged witness told the paper. “The doorman was on his phone (which was) in the drawer. When we walked up behind him, we saw him watching porn.” The he-said-she-said dispatch includes anecdotes about management denying the accusation, laughing in the family’s faces, and one of the family members saying, “I saw what I saw.”

“The Yampa Valley Housing Authority’s first meeting of the new year, set for Jan. 12, will be a big one, both in terms of the length of the agenda and its importance,” reportsSteamboat Today. “High on the list of topics the housing authority will tackle is adoption of the recommendations of the citizens housing steering committee that were presented to the Steamboat Springs City Council and Routt County Board of Commissioners Dec. 13. The report called for the creation of 700 new housing units within four years to close the gap between existing supply and demand.”

The Longmont Times-Call reports on damages from high winds that blew through the Front Range Monday including a large barn being “ripped apart.” Longmont Police Cmdr. Joel Post told the paper winds didn’t have an adverse impact in the city, though. “He said he did not hear reports of traffic disruptions or toppled trees, such as a tree that crashed into a house in Boulder.”

“Colorado 133 over McClure Pass was closed late Monday afternoon due to the high avalanche danger and was to remain closed Tuesday for avalanche control, as a slow-moving winter storm swept across Colorado and was expected to linger all week,” reportsThe Aspen Daily News. “In addition, an avalanche closed Interstate 70 in both directions at Vail Pass just after 3 a.m. Tuesday in the area known as the Narrows. The Colorado Department of Transportation said at 4:30 a.m. that crews were on-scene to evaluate conditions. The closure was in place at Exit 180/Vail and Exit 195/Copper Mountain. Check cotrip.org for updates.”

Affordable housing issues are back on the front page of The Boulder Daily Camera. “Since 2000, developers putting up housing projects in Boulder have been required to dedicate at least 20 percent of their units as permanently affordable,” the paper reports. “There are four different ways they can satisfy this city mandate: provide affordable units on-site, provide them off-site, dedicate land to the city that’s equivalent to the value of the requirement or pay the city an equivalent amount of money. This final option, called “cash-in-lieu,” is by far the most popular and controversial of the four.” The paper notes developers “are routinely blasted during public hearings when they take the cash-in-lieu route, because it can appear to be an easy out — a shortcut for people who want to build market-rate or high-end housing and would rather throw the city a little cash than concern themselves with economic diversity.”

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About the Author

Corey Hutchins

is a journalist in Colorado, and Columbia Journalism Review's Rocky Mountain correspondent for the United States Project. Follow him on Twitter @CoreyHutchins and email him at CoreyHutchins [at] gmail [dot] com.

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